Winged Cupid is painted blind
by fucking salad
Summary: Cupid was supposed to hit someone else with his golden arrow. Surely, not Quinn Fabray. Prompt by Faberry captain Teadalek aka Bobbie.
1. Rising from the past

"Winged Cupid is painted blind", wrote Shakespeare.

Cupid got a tiny bit irked anytime he got called 'blind'. He was just nearsighted, that was all.

He wasn't a 'chubby blonde toddler' either. It also wasn't his fault he got put there on his cloud to shoot arrows around.

Love was such a big deal for humans, he didn't understand it at all, nor did he truly feel the enormous responsibility which lay – metaphorically and literally - in his hands. He thought that it was just a wildly unreasonable concept, but humans were completely unreasonable after all, so they got what they deserved. Let's just say this straight: humans hated Cupid the same way Cupid hated humans.

So he was up there, on a warm spring day, perched up on his boring cloud, with his boring arrow and bow, waiting for a chance to entertain himself, when he saw the blurred image of a brunette girl in a school in New York, and he heard the very limpid sound of her voice for the first time.

_Wow_, thought Cupid. _She sounds so sad._

The tiny girl was singing in an empty auditorium, alone, for nobody else but for herself. Cupid felt like he was part of a huge crowd watching her nonetheless.

She looked like a simple girl, maybe one who dreamt behind movies and song lyrics and ballet routines. She probably was beautiful, although Cupid couldn't really see her face properly. But from what he could tell by the sound of her voice, she had sweet eyes, and some sort of clearness, of transparency to her. And that was a rare thing.

He then spotted a boy, in the confusion of a dance class.

His blurred image moved effortlessly through the crowded class to a piano tune. He looked strong, and handsome in that peculiar way dancers are: in the way they stand, in the way they elegantly extend their hand to a partner, in the way their moves always look so effortless but are so cruel on their bodies. His face looked scrunched up in a grimace of pain and melancholy.

_That's perfect_, thought Cupit. _Talented girl, talented boy. They both look afraid, somehow. Like the world hasn't quite understood them so far._

The girl was Rachel Berry, and the boy was Brody Weston.

They both studied at NYADA, and met in dance class one day. They moved around each other like they were dancing, even when they weren't: they walked and talked and pirouetted and twirled and swayed around each other for days and months.

The story had been written over and over again, by Cupid personally, mainly because it always worked, and people ended up happy. Boys and girls unveiled their undiscovered amazing inner world, they had a new-found self-esteem, they could be honest and open up to each other, and they finally found somewhere they belonged.

Without thinking twice, as soon as he found Rachel and Brody to be in the same place – outside of NYADA, during a lunch break - Cupid pulled the arrow back, angled it niftily, and sniped at the guy. Too bad a girl walked in front of him right in that moment, and got hit by the arrow instead.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Rachel Berry," the blonde said grinning.

_What. I- I did this wrong. This never happened. You damn unknown perfectly beautiful blonde girl._

Cupid wasn't used to failure. But when it happened, it hit him bad. I guess you could say that, had Cupid been human, he would've ended the night in a crappy bar, moaning about how Rachel Berry and Brody Weston pissed him off because they were supposed to live as beautiful Broadway material together with many babies but he had shot a girl instead, a _girl_, and _who was she _anyways, and the bartender would've kicked him out after a poor attempt at shooting arrows around at people and then at tables.

_Whatever,_ thought Cupid,_ stupid humans._

Rachel's eyes locked on Quinn's for the first time after such a life-changing experience – and boy, had she changed – like living in New York, right when they were hit by Cupid's arrows\. Being a metropolitan animal somehow worked well on Berry, even though Quinn couldn't quite put her finger on the reason why.

Maybe it was the classy outfit, maybe it was the sunshine in her hair, or maybe it was her new-found confidence that really captivated Quinn.

"Remind me once again why we haven't used those Metro passes all this time?"

"Hi, Quinn," breathed Rachel to a long-haired, somehow dorkier, somehow more beautiful than ever Quinn Fabray. She excused herself, said bye to Brody and suddenly hugged Quinn, without any warning, like she used to. Quinn was just a bit taller than Rachel, and somehow she felt like Rachel's chest was made for hugging people. It was welcoming, and warm, and felt a little like holding Quinn's old teddy bear.

"Hi New Yorker," said Quinn, and Rachel immediately stepped back and lit up, with the exact same old standard show smile Quinn remembered. "I bet you couldn't wait until someone from back home called you this way," teased Quinn.

"You're quite right, Miss Ivy League," grinned Rachel.

Quinn's chest suddenly tightened around her heart as soon as Rachel looked at her in that same old, somehow wistful way, and she suddenly _felt_ her scar from the year before, when some splinters of her shattered car window had pierced through her left lung.

So as a result she coughed out the next question, really wanting to look away from those bottomless brown pits so the pain could stop, but unable to disengage that powerful… _thing_.

"So I know we already talked about the potential sleeping arrangements on Skype when we mentioned visiting each other, but since I basically came out of the blue uninvited I really want to be certain: are you sure it wouldn't be any trouble for you if I slept with- I mean, in… if I stay- _cough –_ if I stayed at your apartment?", spluttered out Quinn.

A look of worry flashed through Rachel's eyes, but only for a second, because Quinn, even through the coughs, looked healthy, and safe, and _whole_.

"Yes, I am. Sure. That you can stay at my apartment. Kurt will be happy to see you," she laughed, and smiled at her feet, and in that moment Quinn thought about her little jaunt to New York by train, that old fashioned way of travelling the distance, of slowly erasing the miles that come between two people. Quinn decided she liked the idea of hopping on a train to see Rachel Berry in her natural element, although she couldn't quite grasp the reason _why_.

When they were trying to fall asleep that night, one beside the other on Rachel's twin bed, they realized soon that they were both quite too excited to sleep, although the peace and serenity of the bedroom and the added warmth that the other's body provided felt nice.

"Today was great," whispered Quinn in a groggy voice, muzzy from sleepiness and from the lovely warmth Rachel's body radiated under the duvet.

Rachel instantly thought, this is her bedroom voice. She couldn't see her face, both because she had her back turned to her – Rachel had the habit of sleeping on her side, somehow ready to jolt in action if a crazy murderer or a burglar ever broke in – and because the room was pitch dark, but _that_ was her bedroom voice. Her secret, sleepy, groggy, unguarded voice.

She turned partly to breathe back, "I bet you enjoyed MOMA and the adopted benches in Central Park the most."

Quinn could hear Rachel smiling through that sentence, and the fact that Rachel knew her well, after all, made her heart warm, and she smiled to the ceiling, in the dark, like a fool.

After a while, Quinn whispered: "You know, I once read something, a couple of years ago. It's from James Salter's _Burning the Days_."

Quinn heard Rachel breathing slowly and evenly in the dark, beside her. She wasn't sure she was still awake, and she also wasn't sure she wanted her to listen to what she was about to say. She inhaled, and went on: "The quote says, more or less: 'sometimes, you are aware when your big moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.' I feel like I've never been aware when my big moments were happening, which led to many regrets, and depression. But today, I feel like something rose from the past. Or someone…", and with that, she fell asleep.


	2. A missing part

**Thank you to all readers/reviewers/subscribers! :) Tiny little reminder - the lines written in italics are Cupid's thoughts!**

**Chapter 2**

The lights and shadows of New York had always had a strange fascination on Quinn.

Quinn had never been to New York before Nationals came around. And when they lost, the beauty of New York really hit her. As they walked out of the theater, a light breeze was blowing, and it was past 7pm, sunset: the city was awakening. A buzz, an excitement could be tasted in the air, and no matter how dejected and sad and powerless the Glee club felt, Quinn was very aware of being at the centre of the world.

The city had looked so big, so endless, even scary at times. It hid dark corners behind dazzling lights, the contrast had blinded Quinn but she hadn't been able to stop looking up nonetheless, up at the sky, and at the skyscrapers, and at the big playbills. New York wasn't a city, it was a whole new world unfolding before her.

"You can't even see the tops of skyscrapers, look," Puck had told Quinn as they walked back to their hotel, as she felt dizzy from all the looking up, like they hadn't really been aware of their surroundings before the competition.

As Quinn looked out of Rachel's bedroom windows, taking in the wonder of the city at dawn, she felt empowered by the view. As opposed to sunset, sunrise had a special feature: it looked like the city was going to sleep. Buildings turned yellow, but not of a genuine yellow: it was a light glow, coloring the city from the ground upwards, until it reached the sky.

The light of 6.49 a.m. on skyscrapers gave brightness to wide spaces, discreet and infinite, reaching everything and everyone.

When Quinn rested her forehead on the windowpane, she wished she could always feel so illuminated, and infinitesimal, like a drop in the ocean. A sparkling particle of dust dancing in the morning light.

Quinn squinted at the bright light reflection on a far away skyscraper, and she heard someone in the room.

"What are you doing up? It's Saturday, and it's 7am. You never struck me as a morning person," Rachel whispered in the slowly brightening room, poking her shoulder.

Quinn turned around and saw Rachel's morning face: all scrunched up, her hair all over the place, her hands balled up in fists against her eyes, rubbing at them like a child who had been awoken far too early for her liking, her large pink pajama dotted with golden stars. Quinn stared at her for a while, trying to decide if she was glad, honored to see Rachel like this, in a way not so many people knew her. She decided that she definitely was. She thought about Rachel's dads waking up to this face for 18 years and all she could think about was that she never had this kind of intimacy with anyone, not even with the guy who got her pregnant, not even with her own family, not even with herself.

Quinn thought it was easy to like Rachel after all, now that they were so free of all the typically high-school archetypes.

"New York is too exciting to oversleep," smiled Quinn in the glow of dawn.

"What the heck are you two doing up at this time of the night, screeching like howling monkeys?!" grumbled Kurt, who ran to the window and shielding his eyes from the brightness closed the blinds shut, shouted "Shush! Sleeps time for Kurt here!" to Rachel and Quinn, pointing at himself, and ran back to sleep, muttering "Crazy people" over and over like a mantra until he closed his bedroom door.

A dark minute of silence went by before Rachel whispered "He's not much of a morning person. Especially on weekends."

"I figured," laughed Quinn under her breath.

"And he's a light sleeper, so he wakes up at the softest noise."

"Mmh. Howling monkeys, though. Seriously?"

They laughed, trying to muffle the sounds to prevent Mr. Hyde from waking up again.

"So… what do you want to do today?" breathed Rachel, yawning without dignity. A little lion cub.

"I don't know. Surprise me!"

"I think I have quite the right thing in mind," grinned Rachel after a moment.

A light breakfast, a shower, a few subway intersections and an hour later, Quinn exhaled, "This is so cool."

The High Line.

Quinn was mesmerized. It was so quiet and beautiful. It was misty, and she thought about how she'd been living in fog and steam the whole of her life, and how she felt so transparent right then, like water.

She looked at Rachel and asked, "What do you think is your happiness? Hey, don't laugh at me, I'm serious."

Rachel became serious all of a sudden, staring into Quinn's forest green eyes. She felt a strong grip inside her chest and skipped a few breaths.

She felt like she was reading too much into the question. She was sure she was imagining Quinn's sad and curious eyes, just like those several times in high school she had caught Quinn's gaze and it had wrenched her heart.

"I guess singing is what feels most like happiness to me. I… it feels like floating on a cloud. And for a minute, I can look at the whole world, at all the people who've been negative for me, from my little cloud and for that couple of minutes, I feel truly worthy and… great. It's empowering. It gives me enough energy to go out in the world and keep repeating myself that I was made for this, that I can do it."

Quinn kept looking at her with those eager eyes, as they walked for a few minutes, before Rachel asked her, "What do you think is _your_ happiness, Quinn?"

Quinn looked down for a few seconds, thinking.

"In eighth grade, I thought my happiness was my new nose, my new name and friends, then as a sophomore, I thought happiness was being in control of everything. When I was 17, I thought true happiness was finding myself, and then some months later real happiness for me was being alive."

Rachel looked at Quinn's legs, which were there. Healthy, strong, and moving.

"But when I graduated, Yale looked like my new, refreshing starting point. Winter in New Haven really is magical," Quinn whispered, smiling.

"I'm so happy you're finally starting to feel better," Rachel nodded.

Quinn thought Rachel had been probably the only thing that had constantly been there throughout her odyssey in high school: her parents had abandoned her, at some point, boyfriends came and went faster than the change in Tina's clothes style, the people she called friends – Santana, Brittany, Mercedes for a while, Sam – she didn't feel like they wholly understood her.

_Oh listen to her, whining about people not understanding her, _thought Cupid, up on his comfortable cloud, as he got more and more confused as to what exactly these two girls had in common and why on earth they were even friends.

"Have you ever asked yourself why I treated you so badly all those years?", Quinn asked, her voice a murmur, full of self-reproach, willing both for Rachel to hear her out, but also for her not to listen at all and ignore the question.

But Rachel had a good ear.

"More times than I can count, to be honest with you. And of the many hypothesis – Finn, my unpopularity, my obnoxious personality – not one convinces me. Have you asked yourself the same question?", she tilted her head to a side and cracked that lopsided smile that made Quinn smile too in reflex. Quinn had once read about mirror neurons – how some neurons tend to simulate and mimic actions performed by another – but she wasn't sure they were the ones responsible. It was probably because Rachel looked way too much like a puppy to be human.

"Yes, many times. I never asked myself anything back when I used to torture you, of course, because I thought that was just the inbred consequence of me being popular – natural selection on a small scale – and I remember thinking of the people in high school, of its small scale society, as a pyramid, like the ones Sue Sylvester _adored_. There were the tops of the pyramid, who stood gracefully planting their feet on the back of the people who were on the bottom of the pyramid, who were on all fours with their knees and hands in the dirt, and their eyes downcast."

Rachel gasped.

"I know I was extremely mean and completely disconnected with reality, but that was my genuine thought for a few years. My parents had raised me that way."

Rachel looked hurt for a second, then flipped her hair over her shoulder in a way that reminded Quinn of sophomore Rachel and her diva stormouts, and made her giggle.

"Anyway, I also remember being frustrated all the time. With you in particular," Quinn looked at Rachel for a second, but those curious brown endless pits demanded too much attention, and Quinn had to go on with her reasoning, so she stared at her feet as they walked along the High Line.

"I was frustrated with you because you reminded of someone I thought I had got rid of many years before. I had buried her under a plastic surgery, years of gymnastics and a new name. I had traded her in for what I was, and the sight of you made my firm conviction waver, and it scared me."

Quinn realized she was talking about her younger self in third person, and that felt unfair and stupid.

"Had I traded my younger, nerdier self in for the wrong person? I realized only recently that exactly as I had hated myself because of what I was – this geeky kid who read too much and was proud of her passion in music – you _loved_ yourself because of how weird – no offense – you were. Exactly as I had given in and changed who I was, you never gave in, and you were always proud of yourself, you loved yourself enough not to do it, not to change or cover up."

Rachel didn't understand why Quinn put her through her own personal hell, cruel nicknames and slushies, even though Lucy had been through it, so she asked Quinn.

"I think, deep down, I was trying to prove to myself that my choice had been the right choice, and that your choice was wrong. I envied you."

"You have a weird mind, Lucy Quinn Fabray."

Quinn loved Rachel for putting the Lucy before the Quinn.

"I'll take that as a compliment."

They continued to walk on for a while, in silence.

Quinn didn't tell how it all had created a weird mix of envy and protectiveness towards Rachel as she grew up; that little part of Lucy Quinn knew was never going to get back because she had suffocated it… she saw it in Rachel. She had hated seeing Rachel for so many years because she always felt parts of herself missing, and they were right in front of her, dreaming so optimistically and just _being_. She wondered how something that is missing can hurt. She always felt so constricted in herself, while Rachel seemed perfectly fine. She didn't tell Rachel because she was sure it'd make her feel sad, and she didn't want that right now.

_She has the whole universe inside her and she sees it in someone else._

Rachel was smiling at the sun making its way through the clouds, thinking how incredibly similar they were. They had seen themselves going absolutely nowhere so many times, and they had pushed each other to dream more, to dare more. Rachel had mostly been gentle in encouraging Quinn, Quinn had mostly been frustrated and harsh in encouraging Rachel.

They had different ways of acting, but they ticked for the same things. Future, self-accomplishment, meaningful relationships. Finding themselves.

Over dinner, they joked about how they had written Loser Like Me together, and how the song sounded silly to them, two years later. It had felt right, back then, but now it just sounded silly.

Just like Quinn's insults.

"And when I wrote Get It Right…"

Rachel wondered if she had written about Quinn.

Quinn wondered if Rachel had ever sung about her.

Cupid knew she had.


End file.
